Janelle Gelfand has just reported the death, after 60 years, of the Cincinnati World Piano Competition.

The organisers were unable to raise $300,000 to keep it running.

It was America’s longest-running annual piano competition.

At times it was so ferocious that one pianist played til her hands bled (below).

Read more here.

From Colin Brookes, violist of the Ulysses Quartet:

Small bump on return trip traveling with Ulysses Quartet from Osaka International Chamber Music Competition at the airport in Itami, May 23rd.

Flying ANA, we reach the security gate where 3 of us, 2 violinists and violist get held up. Before we even put our stuff through the X-Ray machine a man picks up Tina’s violin without speaking to her and began to walk away. Later they try to inform Tina and Rhiannon that they must check their instruments.

My viola is set aside and I was told to wait. Measurements are taken, and dozens of messages relayed over walkie-talkie back and forth to supervision. Meanwhile, the violins are eventually approved as carry-ons, with a little shouting and argument. As I wait next to my viola, they take more measurements and inform me that it is above the regulations for length as a carry-on.

I am told the plane is too small, and people have carry-ons so I must check it. Firstly, to get to Osaka on May 10, we transferred in Tokyo and flew the exact same route and *exact* same plane model. There were no problems bringing the instruments on the plane and priority boarding was graciously offered. We inform them of this fact, with my ticket stubs as proof. This fact is ignored, and their response is a repetition of their size regulations.

We argue that according to their website, valuables and “works of art” must be excluded from checked luggage. They refuse to budge and insist I must either check it, buy a seat for it, or take it out of the case and leave it bare “with a cushion” and check the case.

A final “attempt” is made to fit it in an ANA approved case, which turns out to be a violin case and much too small. By this point, the flight is being held past gate departure time, and in a last ditch effort our cellist Grace suggests the viola can fit behind her cello in a seat already purchased by our travel provider.

ANA representatives accept this solution and we run to the plane. Once the manager escorts us to the purchased seat, he approves the safety regulation of the viola tucked behind the cello. The fact that it came down to that is mind-blowing. We are just trying to make the world a better place by sharing our music, and it’s only harder to do this when airlines like ANA give us so much difficulty. Please share this and do anything you can to get these rules looked at and changed. We’ll be reaching out to the airline directly.

The British-Gibraltarian conductor Karel Mark Chichon, who walked out recently on the radio orchestra in Saarland, has been named music director of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria.

(That’s the Canary Islands.)

Chichon, 36, is married to the opera diva Elina Garanča.

The radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur runs an annual ballot among its editors and musicians to choose what they think is the country’s best and most progressive orchestra.

Last year it was the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

This year it is Kirill Petrenko’s orchestra of Bavarian State Opera.

That won’t wash well in Berlin.

Moscow police today raided the apartment of Kirill Serebrennikov, who is accused of misuse of public funds.

Serebrennikov, artistic director of the Gogol Centre since 2012, is presently staging Hansel und Gretel in Stuttgart.

Friends say the charge is politically motivated. Russian media report that police are conducting searches at 17 Moscow addresses linked to Serebrennikov, including his apartment and the theatre itself.

Serebrennikov has staged opera at the Vienna Festival and theatre at Avignon. He is also an acclaimed film director.

We hear she has just announced Isaac Thompson as Vice President of Artistic Planning.

Thompson is the mind behind the Cincinnati Symphony’s innovative Pélleas trilogy with director/designer James Darrah. He also put in place a new artistic model for the May Festival, bringing in Juanjo Mena as Principal Conductor and Gerard McBurney as Creative Partner.

There are still plenty of holes to be filled in the NY Phil’s executive suite. More hands needed at the wheel.

picture source unverified

The other Bond just stood and beamed.

New ad campaign starts today.

We think they are quite nice to musicians, too.

Robert Porco will end his tenure as Cleveland’s Director of Choruses in September 2018, after 19 years.

‘Bob Porco has been a great musical partner of the Cleveland Orchestra,” says Franz Welser-Möst, music director. ‘At home in Cleveland, and on tour, he has been a driving force in bringing our choral works to life.  He has taken on challenging repertoire from Mozart to Mahler, from Beethoven to Stravinsky, and for our annual opera productions across multiple languages and styles – and all with a group of dedicated volunteers.  He has inspired thousands of singers to perform at their best.’

The BBC has announced the death of Roger Moore, aged 89.

No other Bond came close.

Epic duel: Bond vs Lotte Lenya (actually, this is Sean Connery)

It can’t be hard.

A brilliant phoney paper titled ‘The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct’ was accepted and published in a peer-reviewed, gender studies journal.

It contained such beautiful formulations as ‘We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations’. Here’s how it was done.

Now let’s apply these enlightened ideas to contemporary musicology.

Here are few gender themes for our creative readers to play around with as abstracts for academic papers:

– Gender suppression as subtext in Schumann’s piano concerto

– Intertextuality in the left hand part of Für Elise

– Manspreading in Mahler

– Penile aggression in Pli selon pli.

Have fun!

There will be a record prize for the winner.

UPDATE: The advanced class may choose to write their papers in the style of (a) Richard Taruskin, (b) Carol Oja or (c) Joachim Kaiser.

The International Maj Lind Piano Competition in Helsinki, Finland, has selected 44 pianists from 195 applicants.

They come from 16 countries: South Korea (10 competitors), Finland (6), United States (5), Russia (4), China (3), Germany (3), Indonesia (2), Israel (2), Italy (2), Spain (1), Georgia (1), Great Britain (1), Canada (1), Norway (1), Ukraine (1) and New Zealand (1).

This is becoming a familiar phenomenon. The South Koreans send in vast numbers of applications, of whom a proportion reach the final round and one or two will receive awards, thereby giving an impression of a national powerhouse.

Who funds all these applications and how are they organised? Is there a state body that sends them in, or a private foundation? Either way, the impression is being given that the future of music is Korean.

Queues in Seoul for Seong-Jin Cho’s new release